Supercapacitors Makers Enjoying Strong Growth

Recently, Ioxus announced 80% annual growth in Japan, a progressive market for ultracapacitor applications, though it was in Hong Kong that Meidensha of Japan recently landed the world's largest supercapacitor order at over $300 million.

Earlier in 2013, Ioxus unveiled the 1200F iCAP™ cell, a high-powered building block for a new family of advanced module products enabling superior start/stop designs for combustion engine vehicles. This introduction followed the successful launch of three new modules for renewable energy and heavy transport applications: the iMOD® 80V/12F, 16V/500F and 48V/165F series. For the market as a whole, IDTechEx forecasts 30% real growth, in line with recently declared results for the industry leaders and the new markets about to be opened such as major use in capturing rotational and vertical energy in material handling, braking of elevators and mainstream replacement of lithium-ion batteries in hybrid electric vehicles.

Further Potential

The excitement lies in the potential for better supercapacitors as much as the surging rate of sales. Theoretically, graphene based supercapacitors could have over six times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries while retaining vastly superior cycle life, calendar life, reliability and power density and the ability to be fully discharged. Graphene has been recognized as a promising active material for supercapacitors due to its outstanding electrical conductivity and large surface area, as they are the two most important requirements for supercapacitors. Mostly, the energy density figures offered are a mere one hundredth of this because the graphene is so impure and re-agglomeration remains a problem. Indeed, having a pre-layer on the electrode that firmly holds atomic thickness sheets is a major challenge too.

Breakthroughs

Researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea recently developed a new method to massively synthesize enhanced yet affordable materials for supercapacitors. The research team led by Prof. Ji-Hyun Jang from UNIST, previously reported a novel approach to synthesize chemical vapor deposition-grown three-dimensional graphene nano-networks (3-D GNs) that can be mass produced while retaining the excellent properties of 2D graphene and published in Scientific Reports in May 2013.

Now, Prof. Jang has demonstrated a unique route to obtain a mass-producible mesoporous graphene that does not re-agglomerate. It is a mesoporous graphene ball (MGB) with a large surface area and great conductivity, via precursor-assisted CVD, using metal precursors as a catalyst which is applicable to supercapacitors. Compared to the conventional graphene synthesis methods, the new approach is scalable and able to produce high quality and customizable graphene with better environmental impacts.